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City Research Online City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Lang, T. and Mason, P. (2017). Sustainable diet policy development: implications of multi-criteria and other approaches, 2008-2017. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, doi: 10.1017/S0029665117004074 This is the accepted version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/18654/ Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0029665117004074 Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. 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City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] 1 Title: Sustainable Diet Policy Development: implications of multi-criteria and other approaches, 2008-17 Title short version: Policy Development on Sustainable Diets Authors: Tim Lang and Pamela Mason Institution: Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London contact author: Prof Tim Lang, Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK tel: 07812-570579 e: [email protected] Submitted to: Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, based on paper presented to Nutrition Society Summer Meeting, King’s College London, July 12, 2017 wordcount: 7k + references + tables AUTHORS INSTRUCTIONS: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the- nutrition-society/information/instructions-contributors / Cambridge Univ Press (publisher of ProcNutSoc): Amanda Johns tel: 01223-347922 (0730-1300 hrs each day) Financial Support: None Conflict of Interest: None 2 Abstract (237 words) The objective of this paper is to draw lessons from policy development on sustainable diets. It considers the emergence of sustainable diets as a policy issue and reviews the environmental challenge to nutrition science as to what a ‘good’ diet is for contemporary policy. It explores the variations in how sustainable diets have been approached by policy-makers. The paper considers how international UN and EU policy engagement now centres on the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Change Accord which require changes across food systems. The paper outlines national sustainable diet policy in various countries: Australia, Brazil, France, Netherlands, Qatar, Sweden, UK and USA. While no overarching common framework for sustainable diets has appeared, a policy typology of lessons for sustainable diets is proposed, differentiating (a) orientation and focus, (b) engagement styles and (c) modes of leadership. The paper considers the particularly tortuous rise and fall of UK governmental interest in sustainable diet advice. Initial engagement in the 2000s turned to disengagement in the 2010s, yet some advice has emerged. The 2016 Referendum to leave the EU has created a new period of policy uncertainty for the UK food system. This might marginalise attempts to generate sustainable diet advice, but could also be an opportunity for sustainable diets to be a goal for a sustainable UK food system. The role of nutritionists and other food science professions will be significant in this period of policy flux. Keywords: Sustainable Diet; Food Brexit; food policy; dietary guidelines; sustainable dietary guidelines Introduction This paper considers the rebirth of policy interest in sustainable diets. This used to be considered a concern only or mainly of the developed world, but no longer. International interest has spread(1-5). The paper explores what the notion of sustainable diets means in policy, drawing out themes which have emerged as engagement has grown. It notes the strong role of climate change on the one hand and the costs of the nutrition transition, on the other. At its simplest the term ‘sustainable diet’ is often taken to mean nutrition + climate change reduction. But the science suggests the need for a more complex or ‘multi-criteria’ approach(6, 7)..The paper considers policy developments in a number of countries which have been particularly policy active, asking what lessons can be learned from how they have addressed this complexity. It concludes that a number of clear categories of policy approach, style and engagement have emerged. The paper ends with a consideration of the UK as an example of a state where scientific interest in and support for sustainable diets has at times been high, and where policy engagement was initially strong but where it then experienced a 3 decline in governmental sponsorship. This was due firstly to acceptance that national dietary patterns would have to change for health, environmental and security reasons, only for policy development to weaken following a change of government in 2010; it has weakened further since the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) from which the UK derives 31% of its food(8). This rise and fall of policy engagement could be viewed simply as an example of politics, of little interest to nutrition sciences or its translation into public policy. In fact, it illustrates how international political stability and support are preconditions for policy-makers being able to address complex and interdisciplinary evidence such as has emerged in the discourse about sustainable diets. The paper suggests that such disruptions to rational policy-making, while deep in the current case of the UK and its Food Brexit(9). are not unknown. Nutrition scientists therefore have an important role in promoting (a) how dietary improvement links with wider issues of sustainability, (b) why this matters to the general public, and (c) offering new goals to what is required from food supply linking health, environment and economy. A particular opportunity lies in promoting evidence-based sustainable dietary guidelines, an approach to sustainable diets on which there is now considerable international policy experience, discussed here. Policy makers have become increasingly more aware that dietary change is necessary to help meet the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Change Accord. Pressure to respond has grown from civil society and industry(10, 11).. There has been much attention to the particular issue of meat and dairy within diets, particularly in the nutrition transition, as developing nations’ incomes rise. Meat and dairy have been a particularly ‘hot’ issue, with strong evidence about animals’ contribution to climate change, water use and feed use. In 2006, the FAO published a sober account of livestock’s role in ecosystems stress, later also arguing efficiencies could reduce these(12, 13) In 2016, China was reported as being committed to levelling off its meat consumption but it is unclear what leverage this report had, although the Government is committed to preventing dietary ill-health(14) . International comparisons have explored consumers’ willingness to change(15, 16) . Studies of whether meat’s impact varies by method of rearing have been summarised(17, 18) , and reinforce the health advice for high levels to be reduced(19, 20). The notion of sustainable diet and emerging policy engagement The term sustainable diets has crept into policy discourse over the last two decades but its scientific origins are usually credited to Gussow and Clancy’s 1986 proposal for Dietary Guidelines for sustainability(21) . For them, sustainability was a composite term, in which nutrition and environment should be aligned, in keeping with sustainable development thinking proposed at that time and summarised in the UN Brundtland Report a year later(22).Academic interest in the topic blossomed(23), particularly in the 2000s, and today an expanding literature has been summarised(7, 24-27). Although the scientific literature is usually presented as beginning in the late 20th century, its origins are older. Arguably, the first serious treatise was by Thomas Malthus in his 1798 4 Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the future of society(28) . Malthus’ long title (it is actually even longer) was an early recognition that the relationship between human physiological needs, planetary capacity, agricultural potential and population growth is societally determined; choices need to be made – for Malthus a key issue was to control fertility and food supply. His views varied on the latter(29) , but he was clear that what is now called sustainability is a social construct, subject to policy decisions, not just a technical or a nutrition-environmental one. He laid the grounds for what today is termed a ‘multi-criteria’ approach to diet, that no one factor dominates policy; policy has to juggle competing data. This approach was captured again nearly two centuries later, when Moore Lappé wrote the mass selling Diet for the Small Planet, published in 1971(30) .. For her, dietary change was needed to protect the environment conceived as a biosphere rather than to tackle climate change, the most cited rationale today; but Moore Lappé’s appeal was unashamedly to society, calling for cultural change and involvement. That argument
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